Karen’s Place

So with the hubbing and the bubbing of Christmas and New Years now well behind me I can finally look forward to enjoying a day off of work with absolutely *nothing* to do… what bliss! So really, the only thing on my schedule today was lunch with Miss L at Karen’s Place, and my biggest challenge was deciding what I wanted to eat.

You probably know by now that Karen’s Place had undergone some extensive renos in the past couple months and have expanded their space (and if you didn’t… now you do!) It is much roomier now, while still retaining its homey atmosphere. A huge mural done by Dwayne Davis adorns the entire back wall of the extension, and they’ve de-cluttered the layout of the original restaurant, even adding in a nice bar for those who want to eat in a hurry. It’s so reminiscent of a diner!

I suppose the biggest change to Karen’s Place (besides the extra 900 or so square feet of space, of course) is the addition of an all-you-can-eat buffet that’s available on certain days. I’ve already heard great things about it, and dying to try it out myself, but unfortunately it wasn’t available today. So instead I decided to order the Chicken Thai Salad, while Miss L had the Veggie Wrap, with the addition of a meatless patty.

It was fairly early when we had arrived, which was a good thing because we weren’t in there for too long before the place literally filled up with other customers. Goodness… minus 18 weather and people are still venturing outdoors for lunch… that’s what makes living in the Cariboo so great!

After thoroughly warming ourselves with hot coffee, our food arrived and it was a very colourful arrangement. No one can say we didn’t eat enough veggies today! Keeping in mind that nothing comes out of a bag, all the veggies in my salad were painstakingly chopped into bite-sized pieces and included carrots, green peppers, tomatoes, cucumber and romaine lettuce. A bed of noodle sits on this, and sliced chicken breast is fanned out on top with a healthy portion of their home-made Thai sauce and sesame.

...chicken thai pt 1...

...chicken thai pt 2...

The salad was more about the noodles than the lettuce, but I didn’t mind, and all the veggies were crisp and pleasantly crunchy, to which I gave myself a mental pat on the back for feeding my body something so healthy today. And although the salad came with extra dressing on the side, I found that there was an adequate amount of it already drizzled over the chicken. And holy bejeezus did that sauce pack a punch! Karen makes it herself and she sure likes to test out that scoville scale on her customers! It was incredible tasty… sweet and peanutty, but strong on the chillies for a wimp such as myself… I must’ve downed 2 glasses of water by the time I was done my meal. And by the way my face was… glowing… (Okay, so I was schvitzing)… I felt like I had accomplished something momentous like running a marathon, when all I really did was finish my plate of salad (which is actually an accomplishment in itself as far as my Momma would be concerned).

It didn’t take long for me to find my bearings again and as I felt feeling return to my mouth I asked myself… “Would I order this again?” Oh, heck yes!

Miss L, on the other hand, ate her wrap in a more relatively calm manner. Her wrap consisted of romaine, cucumber, and green and red bell peppers, as well as the extra meat-less patty that she had asked for. It came with your choice of sides and she went with the garden salad with the sun-dried tomato dressing. The wrap was very generous and was packed full with ingredients, and her salad was as equally fresh as mine was. However, she admitted that she wished that the wrap had just a *tad* more flavour in it, all the while eyeing me down in the state that I was. I’m pretty sure that she was smirking when she said this, but I was too busy pouring water down my throat to call her on it.

...veggie wrap...

...a salad for your veggies please!...

Unfortunately, we were both too full for dessert, which I kind of regret when I saw the carrot cake and chocolate cake that was sitting in the cooler on our way out. I promised myself that I can try it when I go back the next time, perhaps after filling myself up at the buffet… hopefully.